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Thread: A look back at the top 10 most-read @undarkmag stories published in 2020, starting with…

 #10: I had not personally heard of the Voynich manuscript — a cryptic, centuries old “text” that still baffles researchers — until super-smart @jillianefoley brought this story idea to us. If you don’t know about this puzzle, prepare to be fascinated:
https://t.co/ZNEBudrssi
#9: A riveting review by @Svobodster of @jameshamblin's book "Clean" and our collective obsession with "surface notions of cleanliness."
https://t.co/KR1xW0qt8H
#8: My personal favorite headline of the year, which I continue to argue contains a gift to any budding garage band looking for a name. (You’re welcome). Story by the always excellent @DianeEPeters
https://t.co/6jx7sEptGB
#7: Written all the way back on April 16th, @kategammon’s smart look at the anti-vaxx community’s then-percolating suspicions around the hunt for a Covid-19 vaccine seems eerily prescient as vaccine roll-outs get underway now.
https://t.co/ZzLihsMtaQ
#6: She started writing for us almost three years ago, and since then, @Inkfish has become one of our most reliable and thought-provoking contributors. Here she tackles the science on Covid-19 in breast milk, finding it is “not a fluid to fear.”
https://t.co/SKbk0dAagj
#5: Contributing editor Michael Schulson (not on Twitter) was one of the first journalists to examine the backlash against Stanford's John Ioannidis (also not on Twitter). It’s a measured look at a scientific debate that still ruffles feathers.
https://t.co/U8gNoGY5KB
#4: This October entry from Johannesburg-based journalist @EdStoddardZA proved so popular with readers that we’ve considered establishing a chinchilla vertical at Undark. (Not really.) Good stuff on a pressing issue:
https://t.co/XnPyBckR0V
#3: From our opinion silo: As the full breadth and threat of the Covid-19 pandemic was becoming clear last March, epidemiologist and long-running head of @OSHA_DOL, @drdavidmichaels, took a cudgel to the @GOP and its history of science denialism.
https://t.co/JqjXpqjmLt
#2: The headline on @elaberwarren’s highly-trafficked piece from August poses a potent scientific question that continues to puzzle researchers — and one that will surely do so long after Covid-19 is a thing of the past.
https://t.co/NiaXrDO485
And #1: This probing profile of coronavirus specialists who, over the last decades, watched helplessly as research funding went toward other threats is, simply put, a must-read. Story by the very excellent and very Twitter-shy journalist, Charles Schmidt.
https://t.co/Osh0NX7Zkl
PS #1: I’d like to emphasize that this is by no means a list of Undark’s “best” work, but rather its most highly trafficked, which is a measure of … something — but as we all know, not everything.
PS #2: I’m both proud of and humbled by the sheer amount of very excellent journalism that our small team — and our vast network of contributors — manages to produce week in and week out.
PS #3: I cannot conjure enough thanks for our brilliant and unflappable deputy editor, @J_Roberts8, nor for our swashbuckling audience engagement editor @frankieschembri, who truly make the Undark world go ‘round each day.
PS #4: Endless gratitude to @ashleythesmart who cultivates some of the best opinion pieces you’ll read anywhere; @betty_the_nah for keeping our bills (and our writers) paid; and @LucasAndersH who does a little bit of everything at both Undark and its publisher, @KSJatMIT.
PS #5: To our core team of story wizards, including: articles editor @brookeborel, senior editors @Sara_Talpos & Scott Veale; formidable podcast producer @lydiachain; whip-smart production editor @AmandaGrennell; and tireless fact-checkers @mahohnoes & @erikakcarlson: THANK YOU!
PS #6: And finally, special and ultimate gratitude goes to veteran journalist @deborahblum, who came to @KSJatMIT in 2015 and shook things up like a hurricane, turning an already-excellent fellowship program into a world-class incubator of vital science journalism.
PS #7: Her innovations are too many to count (just visit the shiny new https://t.co/mhnYsKXJjH website for a sampling), but giving rise to @undarkmag is one of them.
PS #8: Our modest publication will mark its 5-year anniversary next month. It’s non-profit science journalism undertaken very truly in the public interest, with the intersection where science mingles — or collides — with politics, economics, and culture as its special focus.
PS #9: If you haven’t already checked us out, doing so in 2021 would make for a very solid resolution (I say humbly).

https://t.co/Hp0GgmXPSU
PS#10 (and fin!): Happy New Year, and thanks again to everyone who helps to make @undarkmag happen.

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@FionaPearman @ScottMorrisonMP Morrison is our statue of unempathic neoliberalism - erected by evangelical and corporate Australia to celebrate their victory over compassion, equality and secular humanism. 

Hopefully it gets pulled down like the statues of dubious heroes of oppression from an earlier age.


@ScottMorrisonMP The two-party-preferred system in 
Australia politics isn’t working for people, and it sure isn’t working for the planet.

@ScottMorrisonMP My collapse of faith in our democracies isn’t an accident. It’s one of the central victories of the neoliberal project, delivered through two generations of privatisation, outsourcing and deregulation, underfunding of government services (locked in by tax cuts),...

@ScottMorrisonMP restricting freedom of information, targeting whistleblowers and raiding the media who report on them, delegitimising and gagging public interest advocacy, and criminalising protest.

@ScottMorrisonMP Politics in Australia today relies hugely on the fact that most people don’t know most of what’s going on so as to get away with stuff that couldn’t be done under real scrutiny we have seen a clear example of this with the National Coronvirus Cabinet.
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Eli Tyre
Eli Tyre
@EpistemicHope
There's a particular kind of romantic partnership, with a certain sort of person, that I've wanted since I became a self-aware, directed agent at around age 15.

Empirically, this kind of relationship has been hard to achieve. It hasn't worked out yet, at least.

And this sometimes leaves me wondering if my standards are unreasonable.

In years past that desire was often very alive.

These days, I'm rarely directly or viscerally in contact with it.

I sometimes contemplate aiming for some other kind of romantic and/or sexual relationship instead. In part because I might be more effective if I...I don't know, got laid more? But that's not really the thing. More like, if I had someone around whom I could regularly relax.

But mostly, I don't pursue those alternative relationship-setups out of a sense of something like loyalty to myself + a vague sense of wrongness and/or sadness about it. It often feels like giving up or giving in.

[I might elaborate on the wrongness sometime.]
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Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 ...
@BillyBostickson
@snip96581187 @Daoyu15 @lab_leak @walkaboutrick @ydeigin @Ayjchan @franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 @angie_rasmussen Clearly, because as I have been saying for 8 months now, DTRA and DARPA have been using Ecohealth and UC Davis to collect novel pathogens for gain of function work back in the USA. I have documented this in many threads which I will post here just to annoy everyone.

@Daoyu15 @lab_leak @walkaboutrick @ydeigin @Ayjchan @franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 @angie_rasmussen


@Daoyu15 @lab_leak @walkaboutrick @ydeigin @Ayjchan @franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 @angie_rasmussen


@Daoyu15 @lab_leak @walkaboutrick @ydeigin @Ayjchan @franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 @angie_rasmussen


@Daoyu15 @lab_leak @walkaboutrick @ydeigin @Ayjchan @franciscodeasis @TheSeeker268 @angie_rasmussen
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JefimVogel
JefimVogel
@JefimVogel
LEEDS LEADS CLIMATE BREAKDOWN

8 hours and 1000 flawed arguments and biased procedures later, Leeds City Plans Panel voted 9-5 for airport expansion and the false promises of economic growth.
For “what Leeds needs is a premier-league football club and a premier-league airport”
🧵


1/ There was a lot of "I do care about climate change, BUT" – followed by a lot of blah blah. Blah blah economic growth. Blah blah connectivity. Blah blah competitiveness. Blah blah Manchester. Blah blah Westminster. Blah blah offsetting. Blah blah electric planes. Blah blah blah

2/ Also a lot of "I do have sympathy for residents suffering from planes flying over their roofs at night, BUT” - followed by more blah blah.
One councillor kindly offered his advice: “the way to less noise is more planes”. Right, Sherlock. Want to try that in your backyard?🤦‍♂️

3/ The true sympathies were revealed at the end. The Panel's priority was not the well-being of those living under the flight path, nor the lives and livelihoods of threatened by climate breakdown. Their priority was a bigger, noisier airport, with a terminal in bronze-champagne.

4/ First declaring your sympathy for people’s suffering and then supporting a development that directly aggravates their suffering, is a proper kick in the face for those suffering the consequences. Like first declaring a climate emergency and then aggravating climate breakdown.
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Heather Griffin
Heather Griffin
@MargeNAlia
Part of what is going on here is that large sectors of evangelicalism are poorly equipped to help people deal with basic struggles, let alone the ubiquitous pornography addictions that most of their men have been enslaved to for years.


On the one hand, there's a high standard of holiness. On the other hand, there's a model of growth that is basically "Try Harder to Mean it More." Identify the relevant scriptural truth & believe it with all of your sincerity so that you may access the Holy Spirit's help to obey.

Helping sincere believers believe and obey the Bible facts is pretty much all the Holy Spirit does these days, other than convict us of our sins in light of the Bible facts.

If you know you are sincere and hate your sin and believe the right Bible facts as hard as you can but continue to be enslaved to your pornography addiction, what else left for you to do? Just Really, Just Really, Just Really Trust God and Give it to Him?

To suggest that there are other strategies available sounds to those formed in this model of growth like one is also suggesting that the Bible is insufficient, but it also suggests something just as threatening- that there are aspects of reality that are not immediately apparent.
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Sri Mridanga Saileswari Temple Muzhakkunnu, Kannur KERALA

The temple is established by Parasurama and it is one among 108 Durga temples.
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It is the family diety of Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja.
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Legend...👇
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Devi originated in the form of Mridangam and Parasurama captivated the essence of Devi into a Vigraham. Vigraham is made of Panchaloham.
Kathakali, an art form of Kerala originated here.


Temple Vigraham was stolen 3-4 times, but because of power of Devi all the attempts were failure. Police records says that Whenever the thieves try to steal, they lose their senses, and they will be in a confused state. So they will abandon the idol.
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First thread of the year because I have time during MCO. As requested, a thread on the gods and spirits of Malay folk religion. Some are indigenous, some are of Indian origin, some have Islamic


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Although these beings had to be respected, not all of them were powerful enough to be considered gods. Offerings would be made to the spirits that had greater influence on human life. Spells and incantations would invoke their


Two known examples of such elemental spirits that had god-like status are Raja Angin (king of the wind) and Mambang Tali Arus (spirit of river currents). There were undoubtedly many more which have been lost to time

Contact with ancient India brought the influence of Hinduism and Buddhism to SEA. What we now call Hinduism similarly developed in India out of native animism and the more formal Vedic tradition. This can be seen in the multitude of sacred animals and location-specific Hindu gods
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Thread on
"Intraday Banknifty Strangle based on OI data"

(System already shared, today just share few examples)
(1/n)

-Trade timing after 9:45

-Check Banknifty change in OI data at 9:45, and identify the highest OI built up in call side and put side

-We will sell both strikes with combined premium as SL on both legs.
(2/n)

28th June 2021

BN open-35440
At 9:45 trading at 35350
Highest OI in call side at 35500 CE and 35000 at put side
Strike selection 35500 CE- 35000 PE
(3/n)


29th June 2021

BN open-35323

At 9:45 trading at 35112

Highest OI in call side at 35300 CE and 35000 at put side

Strike selection 35300 CE (232) - 35000 PE (150) Combined premium 382 , Both legs SL 382
(4/n)


30th June 2021

BN open-35030

At 9:45 trading at 35002

Highest OI in call side at 35000 CE and 35000 at put side

Strike selection 35000 CE(176)- 35000 PE(213) Combined premium 389 , Both legs SL 389
(5/n)
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his name might sound familiar because the new cortellucci vaughan hospital at mackenzie health, the one doug ford has been touting lately as a covid-centric facility, is named after him and his family

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